<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Pumpkin Spice Drizzle by TheDarkFlygon</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947747">Pumpkin Spice Drizzle</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon'>TheDarkFlygon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Autumn Fever (Whumptober 2020) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Autumn, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Melancholy, Past Character Death, Pre-Relationship, Sickfic, Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:53:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>899</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947747</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsumugi contemplates how her brain keeps linking autumn and sickness, and how taking care of her crush isn't helping.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Izumi Iori/Takanashi Tsumugi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Autumn Fever (Whumptober 2020) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966432</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Pumpkin Spice Drizzle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm 11 days late but I don't care Imma do Whumptober anyway. Yeetus Nolifus;<br/>To rinse my mouth from long-ass stories (hahaha Last Resorts and it's 3.5K-word-long *first chapter*), I decided I'd write bite-sized stories instead this year, starting with Autumn! I'm using the alternate Whumptober list because the main one really didn't suit my fancy (too many torture-oriented prompts and all, I'm a softie y'all).</p><p>Anyway, it's IoTsumu because nobody is gonna feed me if I don't do it, so here you go. Take my IoTsumu. Please give them more love I'm on my knees for more of them.<br/>Also, yes, I'm kind of reusing my Takanashi Residence AU set-up, but it's actually part of a bigger, crossover clusterfuck setting of mine that is very convenient for just randomly writing about my ships.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Autumn can be a rough season, especially for those who don’t like it. The leaves browning and falling, the temperature going down, the day getting darker – some people like it, some don’t, and most persons out there mostly look down on the season as some sort of weird transition between the warm summer and the cold winter.</p><p>Tsumugi can’t say she has the best memories of this season. Mom passed away on an October morning where the rain kept clashing with the sun and, ever since then, she feels weary of the season. It doesn’t help that the fall has never been good on her dad, stuck between the grief that never went away and the mandatory cold he always gets around that time of the year. It’s never a happy time for the Takanashi household whenever the trees start losing their foliage.</p><p>She’s never been as sick as her late mother was, so Tsumugi has spent most autumns as a caretaker. First, it was for her dad’s heart, then his health, and, finally, the people around her. She doesn’t mind filling that role, far from it, as it fills her with the power her helpless child self didn’t have – but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t get scared every single time she hears someone she cares about has fallen ill during the rainy, cooling season. She most likely will never get over this fear that she’ll lose someone to the weather again, she supposes.</p><p>Usually, she tries to ignore this nagging feeling of constant fear and carry on with her daily life: college, hobbies, seeing friends, going to the café and remembering not to stammer when she speaks to the cute barista who keeps blushing whenever his workmate bothers her with whatever she can find to do so. Their little routine is one of the reasons she keeps coming back to the same place and, when the season changes, she spruces up her own habits by ordering a pumpkin spice latte.</p><p>Well… She’d be honouring this habit if she wasn’t busy trying to take care of someone. Instead, she’s home, in her spacious cosy student flat, for once spending her melancholic times with someone other than her own consciousness or her contemplating father, albeit it’s not for fun.</p><p> </p><p>Tsumugi doesn’t hate autumn, per say – she likes to believe she’s gotten over how much she hated the season when she was a little girl –, but this year, it’s hitting differently. She may not be alone, but she had to be a little forceful to get there. It’s bound to happen when you’re not actually dating the person you have a crush on and this person is none other than Izumi from the Business course.</p><p>How did she get here? Well, it’s simple: she was at the café and she got roped by Kimidori into taking care of her workmate because he was stubborn enough to come to work with what the green-haired girl described as “the black plague, or something, I ain’t a doctor but I know it’s bad anyway”. To be fair to Kimidori, he really looked miserable with his blanched face and all-nighter rings under the eyes, so Tsumugi didn’t hesitate on bringing the boy to her place after insisting on having him lie down rather than try powering through his fever.</p><p>Iori didn’t really want it, but he accepted nonetheless when she managed to convince him he’d feel better with someone taking care of him rather than at work, swaying on his feet.</p><p> </p><p>This is why she’s been studying for an upcoming test sitting on her desk chair put next to her bed who, for once, isn’t occupied by her. Her empty cup of coffee is throning on the nightstand next to medicine and an empty glass going along with the bottle on the bottom of the bedside table, right besides a bucket filled with cold water.</p><p>Every half an hour, she changes the washcloth on his forehead, in silence or lowly humming to her. She has alarms on her phone for when she needs to administer him his medicine and, when she has nothing to do and can’t focus on her lessons because of her concerns, she makes sure nothing gets out of control. That’s the least she can do, after all, to prevent autumn from taking someone else away from her.</p><p>Her heart can’t distinguish between her mother’s sickly condition and her friend’s bout of the flu, so she treats both cases with the same amount of care. She’s even relieved she can be here for Iori, considering how he tosses and turns as he tries to find sleep in a sea of fire. Hearing the sound of the coughing fits exiting his chest tugging at her heart whenever they creep out convinces her that she’s doing the right thing despite the protests she first got from him.</p><p>Deep down, she knows he’ll be fine and will be able to resume life once the sickness will have left, but for now, he needs her. As such, she gives him a smile whenever he looks up to her with glassy eyes, and brushes his bangs out of the way when they stick to his forehead. Maybe he thinks it bothers her to do all of this, but the truth of the matter is that she’d rather be doing that than get possessed by the autumn melancholy.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>